An agricultural fence builder AND a baker. How many men possess such dichotomous talents? Not many. Jake baked me this carrot cake for my birthday……and he did it even though there was a tiny shard of metal in his eye, the result of shaving metal without wearing protective eyewear while working yesterday.

As he slathered on the cream cheese-sour cream frosting, I could see that his eye was swollen and red and watering profusely. It was obvious he was in great discomfort, yet he refused to let me help him with the dinner prep.

Throughout the meal — eaten by candlelight in the gazebo — he kept squeezing his eyes shut, wiping the water trickling from his pupil and otherwise gazing into his napkin. I offered to clean up, but he kept saying, ‘It’s your birthday. You’re not supposed to clean up on your birthday.’ After he washed the last dish, he was in bed and asleep within 5 minutes, dosing fitfully.

This is classic Jake:  soldiering on despite discomfort, never once complaining. I’m not sure why he does this. It’s just who he is. Me, I would have been crying — there would have been no “it’s just my eye watering” about it.

And the cake? Hoo boy, was it delicious. (FYI, the number 2 signifies the number of birthday cakes he’s baked …. we’ve been married two years.) Even though he did it with only one eye open, he couldn’t resist tinkering with the recipe by substituting ginger for the customary nutmeg, which gave it a wonderful, almost citrus flavor.

It was without a doubt the best carrot cake I’ve ever eaten….and I’m not even saying that because my name was on it and he did it with a piece of metal in his eye.

Another year older, another year wiser, another year closer to Polident.

All kidding aside, life isn’t too shabby. I have my health, a great husband, a fine home, great family and friends, two smiley dogs, 32 chickens, an orchard, a garden, a canning pantry, two books in development, more home brew  than I can drink and — this one is a stretch — my dewy good looks.

To mark this day of joy, Jake is baking me a carrot cake with my name on it. I’ve always said, a birthday is not a birthday without seeing my name in icing. For my birthday dinner, I have requested a large slab of beef, cooked rare. Steak and cake: Is there anything more appropriate to eat on one’s day of reckoning?

The carrot cake recipe comes from Cook’s Illustrated, and I couldn’t help but notice it’s two and a half pages long, single spaced. I’ve written about the haughty, condescending tone of this culinary tome before — a voice no doubt influenced by the magazine’s editorial director and founder, the bow-tie wearing, super WASP Christopher Kimball — but allow me to share a few snippets of the opening paragraphs. (For full effect, it should be read in a voice like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island):

“A relic of the health food craze, carrot cake was once heralded for its use of vegetable oil in place of butter and carrots as a natural sweetener. But healthy or not (and we doubt it ever was), we have eaten far more bad carrot cake than good  [sniff, and adjust your imaginary monocle here]. The carrots make the cake invariably soggy. And the oil? It’s a veritable Exxon Valdez for the mouth. Save for the mercilessly thick coating of cream cheese frosting, most carrot cakes are nothing more than good spice cakes gone bad.”  Snap!

It continues:

“Our initial research turned up numerous recipes, and we chose several that seemed promising, but they were, with the exception of only one, very bad. They were so ghastly, in fact, that we had no choice but to dump them in the barrel located outside the test kitchen, douse them in gasoline and light them on fire before Mr. Kimball urinated all over them. But the test wasn’t a complete “wash,” however, as we were able to make some delightful roasted chestnuts over the still smoldering embers….”

Okay, perhaps I took some artistic license with the write-up, but that’s the general gist of it.

I am so going to enjoy my birthday meal!